Elder Kremer is serving a two-year mission in Salt Lake City South. I thought people would like to know the updates. When he returns he will be attending BYU-Idaho.

Monday, April 11, 2016

Mission XP - 11 April 2016

This week was great! We saw a couple awesome miracles. One was that we picked up a new investigator. Her name is Nattalie and she was a former investigator but the dad is letting missionaries teach her again. The other is that we were on splits with a ward mission leader and one of his missionaries and we were in the San-Tropez building, which we aren't aloud to tract in. Anyway, Meece (the ward missionary) and I went to contact a less active who ended up not being home and on the way downstairs we saw this guy who was just passing us when we turned around and asked him if he knew the people we were trying to contact. He said he didn't and then he pointed at my name tag and said,"Mormon...right." I said yes and as we talked more we found out that he just moved here from Los Angles and he didnt know much about Mormon or LDS people but he is dating an LDS girl! Before we left we asked if we could meet with him and teach him what we believe and he said yes! So we set up an appointment and we are excited to see what happens. And Elder Schunk and I are doing good still.

Here is something that was shared with me, It's about elevators, and escalators...

If you think of an Elevator, it goes up and down all day and all night, to different highs and different lows vertically. An escalator constantly goes up, or it constantly goes down, but not vertically. If you put an elevator and its destinations on a graph, it will on be something like (1,7) (2,3) (3,5) etc., and it will just zig-zag up and down, ultimately showing no progression at all. If you put an escalator on a graph and draw a line from (0,0) to (10,10) it will show a constant progression. If we look at this from a spiritual standpoint, we can call this, spiritual progression, or eternal progression. Our purpose in this life is to ultimately be happy, gain a body, and gain eternal life through choices and experiences we have.

In order to return to live with Heavenly Father, and know complete joy after this life, we need to be on this constant, eternal progression. Some may ask, how do you do it? There are few things that I like to think of that helps us to stay on this course. I think of it as, Testimony. Faith. and Endurance. Life gets hard, and we have to rely on our testimony sometimes to know if what we are doing is right or not, and through so many other experiences we have in life. We can continue to build up our testimony through "spiritual CPR", which is Church, Prayer, and Reading. Reading and daily feasting from the scriptures, daily communion with Heavenly Father through prayer, and renewing covenants with Heavenly Father by taking the sacrament each Sunday. We exercise our faith by doing the things Heavenly Father asks us to do, and following the impressions and promptings of the spirit, to bless our lives and the lives of others. We endure the trials and challenges that we face in this life, and approach them as learning opportunities, and not barriers or restrictions.
When we focus on our eternal progression, these are the things that we should think about. If you think of a mall, you will see an escalator that goes up to the second floor of the mall, for different shops and so on. Spiritually, we get on this escalator by being baptized by proper priesthood authority, and making those sacred promises with God. As we get older, we go farther and farther up the escalator and make more covenants, and promises with God, which allows us to be blessed by our Heavenly Father even more, as we are obedient to His commandments.

I love you guys and I know Heavenly Father loves you.

Do what you know you need to even if its difficult, then allow Heavenly Father to bless you the way He knows will help you the most.